


National Day

by smuttyandabsurd



Series: Nineteen Eighty-Four!AU [1]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - 1984, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Angst, Divorce, Dysfunctional Relationships, Dystopia, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-10
Updated: 2013-01-10
Packaged: 2017-11-24 09:11:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/632766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smuttyandabsurd/pseuds/smuttyandabsurd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur decides to end his strenuous marriage to Yao.</p>
            </blockquote>





	National Day

**Author's Note:**

> Entry for Day 11 of the 30 Days Of Writing A Drabble (Or Whatever) A Day Challenge.

The saucepan lid rattled as the salted water reached a boil. Arthur turned down the heat and returned to peeling the potatoes. Just then, the timer on the oven beeped, signalling that it had finished pre-heating. Arthur paused with the peeling, slid the chicken he had prepared on a tray into the oven, and returned to the potatoes again.

It took him a moment to realise he had forgotten to reset the timer, by which time he had no idea just how long the chicken had been cooking for. He let out a curse. He had no choice but to take a wild stab at the remaining time the chicken needed and set the timer accordingly.

Arthur was not a particularly careful cook, but he was especially distracted that evening because of what he had prepared to do. The brown envelope containing all the necessary papers lay flat under the sofa, ready to be extracted and presented at the right moment.

His lips twitched up into a bitter smile. There was never going to be a right moment.

Yao walked through the door just as Arthur was setting the table. He was early home that night as he never was on any other night, but it was the eve of National Day – a public holiday. His only acknowledgement of Arthur was a brusque nod before ducking into their bedroom. Arthur finished laying the table, and hurried back into the kitchen to curse at the potatoes for boiling over.

Dinner was an uncomfortably silent affair as the couple tucked into overcooked chicken and undercooked vegetables with watery mash. But at least there was wine to make up for the sorry meal, or so Arthur thought. As he drained his third glass at the table, he caught Yao staring at him, who quickly averted his eyes and shovelled in another reluctant mouthful of chicken. Abruptly, the latter got up and carried his still-full plate into the kitchen. Arthur poured himself another glass of wine as he listened to Yao scrape most of his dinner into the bin.

They sat at opposite end of the sofa for the rest of the night, with Yao working on his tablet and Arthur pretending to read on his e-reader, the envelope weighing heavily on his mind. At around midnight, Yao finally set aside his tablet and took off his glasses. Arthur’s eyes flitted up.

“There’s something you want to say,” Yao sighed as he pinched the bridge of his nose. It wasn’t a question. He folded his glasses and set it carefully on a side table.

Arthur’s eyes dropped back to the e-reader in his lap. “It’s not important, it can wait,” he mumbled.

Yao was staring at him again, and Arthur was more than aware that his own eyes were not moving across the screen. All the false courage he had so carefully built up seemed to be draining from him as he sobered from the wine. His ruse was not fooling his husband, so he gave up pretending and closed the cover on his e-reader.

“Let’s go to bed.”

It had been a while since they coupled; since the last National Day, if memory served right. This was what their marriage of six years have been reduced to; exchanges of cold, suspicious looks with hardly a word spoken between them, and annual fucks on the day celebrating the establishment of the Party. He would have wept if it wasn’t so bitterly laughable.

“You’re hurting me!” Yao hissed as Arthur thrust into him a little too quickly. When Arthur made no move to adjust his pace, Yao simply gritted his teeth and suffered the remainder of sex in silence.

He knew that Yao considered his keeping quiet as some gross form of being a dutiful husband. It wasn’t fair, but that knowledge was driving him to take all he could at Yao’s expense. After they finished, he stayed awake stewing in shame and regret as Yao slept with his back turned firmly to him.

Breakfast was a similarly grudging affair, the memory of last night’s unsatisfactory sex lingering as a sour aftertaste to their already pitiful attempt at a functioning relationship. Arthur made a concentrated effort to show his remorse. He did the washing up and other little chores without prompt or word of complain, but Yao was not in a forgiving mood and took to ignoring him. They spent most of the day at opposite ends of the sofa again with Yao on his tablet and Arthur on his e-reader, each pretending to be engrossed.

“You had something you wanted to say,” Yao finally spoke, breaking the silence. It took Arthur a while to realise that he was referring to their conversation from the night before.

“Er, yes,” he said. A lump had formed in his throat so his voice came out a little strained. He swallowed and tried again. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask. Something that you’ve been meaning to ask too, I think.”

Yao was staring at him over the rim of his glasses in that disconcertingly piercing and unblinking way he had. Arthur glared at his e-reader, not daring to look up. Not trusting himself to look up.

“This isn’t working, is it?”

Yao blinked, surprised. “What do you mean?” he asked, sharply.

“This!” Arthur hissed with a violent wave of his hand. “Our marriage! Our relationship! Us!”

He looked up then, searching to meet Yao’s gaze, but Yao had averted his eyes. “Well?” he demanded as Yao stared at his tablet. It was an unexpected turn of tables.

“I don’t know what you m–”

“Oh don’t be stupid!”

Arthur was quickly losing his temper. He tossed aside his e-reader and turned to face Yao square on. “We haven’t been a functioning marriage for years – hell, we hardly talk to each other! The truth is you can barely stand to look at me, much less touch m-”

“And what is it you that you want to say, Arthur?” Yao cut in, coldly.

Arthur faltered a little, but quickly regained himself. With a burst of new courage, he bent down to the floor and fished out the envelope from underneath the sofa, tossing it carelessly onto the coffee table.

Yao stared, his eyes widening as understanding dawned on him.

“I think we should consider getting a divorce,” Arthur muttered, a little needlessly as the envelope came stamped from the civil registry.

Yao looked up then and their eyes briefly met; Arthur’s sullen but determined, Yao’s strangely blank. He did not know quite how he expected Yao to react, but it certainly wasn’t the following.

“Is there someone else?” he whispered.

“What?”

“I said,  _is there someone else_?”

Yao’s voice was the coldest Arthur had ever heard, and it sliced right through him. He gaped, astounded. “No, there isn’t anyone,” he ground out, furious and a little indignant at the accusation.

The tension that had strung so tightly a moment ago was now slowly leaking out of the room.

Defeated, Yao leaned over, slid the envelope towards himself, and pulled out the papers. Arthur stood watching as he adjusted his glasses and pored over the print.

After a while, Arthur found that he had to excuse himself with a mumbled word about putting the kettle on. He was finding it difficult to watch as destruction played out visibly on the face of the man he still loved so dearly.


End file.
